Pharmacy technicians work under the supervision of a licensed pharmacist and help pharmacists distribute medicines. This involves taking information and filling up a prescription, counting tablets and measuring other prescription medicines, mixing medications and preparing creams or ointments, and prepares various other intravenous medications.

Thus, the role of a pharmacy technician is as important as other jobs in the medical field. Considering the tasks and responsibilities of a pharmacy technician, how much salary does one make in a year?

For those who are just beginning with their career as pharmacy technician, the salary can start at $7-$8 an hour, while those who have longer years of experience in the field can earn up to $13-$15 per hour. Roughly, that is $26,000-$29,000 annually.

Factors Affecting Compensation

Various factors help determine the salary of a medical practitioner such as location of practice, industry, years of service, and credentials considering that there are also technicians who earn up to $40,000 per year.

Salary according to State

According to studies, average rate for pharmacy technicians is from $12-$16 per hour, and among the highest paying States are:

Even though the above States pay lower than most other States, one thing that must be taken into account as well is that the above States have lower cost of living, thus, the per hour rates are still competitive especially after taxes and other fees have already been deducted.

Salary according to Industry

On the average, those who found employment in hospitals are said to receive higher pay than those working in pharmacies and drugstores.

As mentioned earlier, experience and credentials also determine the salary of practitioners. On the average, pharmacy technicians who have 3-7 years of experience can enjoy additional 10% salary increase per year, while those technicians who pass their certification can earn a one-time additional 10% increase on top of the regular salary. These are just a few of the reasons on how a pharmacy technician can earn up to $60,000 annually.

Employment Prospects

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, career prospects for these health professionals is positive and is expected to experience job growth by 32% of its current population of 335,000 practitioners until 2020 – that is about 110,000 job openings for pharmacy technicians.

Therefore, now is the best time to decide whether this is the best job for prospective students or professionals who want a career change.

These days the majority of medicine is coming directly from the large pharmaceutical companies. This trend started after the discovery of penicillin, with modern marketing techniques the drug manufacturing industry controls the drug production. Before the discovery of penciling and industrial production of drugs, compounding was the only technique that pharmacists could make a medicine based on doctor prescriptions. Compounding is defined as a small batch for a patient with a small production only.

There are many situations that a traditional pharmacy can’t provide a type of medicine that doctors, dentists, or veterans usually order for their patients.

These kinds of pharmacies provide medication for some of the following conditions: adrenal fatigue, andropause, autism, bio-identical hormones, dentistry, dermatology, pain management, palliative, pediatrics, podiatry, prescription, sports, thyroid hormones, veterinary, and wound care. There is not an accurate record for the number of compounding pharmacies in the U.S.

For many patients finding a local pharmacy is a stressful task. Some patients will contact their health insurance service providers for the list of the pharmacies nearby and sometimes their doctors will refer them to the local pharmacy.

There are two major directories with information about local compounding pharmacies in the U.S. and the world:

PCCA (Professional Compounding Centers of America) and IACP (International Academy of Compounding Pharmacies). These two directories have listed some of the compounding pharmacies in different states in the U.S. and other countries in the world.

According to the IACP only 1% to 3% of all prescriptions currently dispensed in the United States are compounded.

However due to the aging of baby boomers in the U.S., the demand for compounding medicine is growing fast and more patients will be looking for them in the near future.

There are newer online directories with more compounding pharmacies listed online. These websites provide more information such as online maps, contact phone numbers, websites and the type of medicine that pharmacies provide for their patients. They also allow patients to contact directly with pharmacies and even send the prescriptions online.

The next generation of directory will be providing mobile apps for smart phone users and indicates the pharmacies location and allows to upload or even scan the prescriptions and send it to the pharmacy using only the cell phone.

The compounding pharmacies are here to stay and their market share will be getting bigger. Compounding pharmacies are doing better and better helping the patients to get the required drug or medicine that they need.

According to statistics published in the Journal of the Medical Association in 1999, around 30 percent of men consider that they ejaculate too quickly during sex. If this is indeed the case, premature ejaculation is by far the most prevalent male sexual dysfunction. Of course, this can be a pretty subjective issue – what might seem like a sprint to one man may seem like a marathon to the next.

Most sex therapists agree however, that the ‘normal’ time frame between penetration and ejaculation is between two and ten minutes. In fact, an official definition of premature ejaculation published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine in 2008 states that sufferers usually climax within a minute or so of penetration and that the condition causes significant anxiety and concern.

If you are one of these men, you may be interested to know that a new medication has just hit the market. The drug, branded Priligy (known by the pharmaceutical name Dapoxetine) is the first drug of its kind to be specifically developed and licensed for the treatment of premature ejaculation. Presently, Priligy has been granted licenses in a number of EU countries including Germany, Sweden, and Italy; and most recently in the UK. At the time of writing, the drug is still awaiting approval by the FDA for marketing in the US – although it can be purchased online.

Priligy only has to be taken when needed, 1-3 hours before sex, and according to clinical trials can increase the length of sex by up to three times.

In a preliminary study published in the international medical journal The Lancet in 2006 for example, the effectiveness and safety of Priligy was examined in a 12 week trial involving over 2600 sufferers of premature ejaculation. Those given a placebo showed little improvement in ejaculatory control; whilst those given the new treatment increased the time they took to ejaculate from an average of 0.91 minutes to 3.32 minutes. In fact, five clinical trials testing the effectiveness of Priligy on over 6000 men in total in the last few years have all shown similar results.

Priligy is specifically designed to be taken as and when required, as opposed to every day. According to research published in the urology journal BJU International in 2008, the drug is both fast acting and is then quickly eliminated from the body within 24 hours – therefore preventing any potential build up of toxicity in the body. Reported side effects of the drug are relatively mild but include nausea (8.7% of men), headache (5.9%) and dizziness (3%). However, given the short acting nature of Priligy, these potential adverse side effects are short lived.